Posted on 11/29/2005 1:23:43 PM PST by Mr. Mojo
More than 2 1/2 years into the Iraq war, Donald H. Rumsfeld has decided the enemy are not insurgents.
"This is a group of people who don't merit the word `insurgency,' I think," Rumsfeld said Tuesday at a Pentagon news conference. He said the thought had come to him suddenly over the Thanksgiving weekend.
"It was an epiphany."
Rumsfeld's comments drew chuckles but had a serious side.
"I think that you can have a legitimate insurgency in a country that has popular support and has a cohesiveness and has a legitimate gripe," he said. "These people don't have a legitimate gripe." Still, he acknowledged that his point may not be supported by the standard definition of `insurgent.' He promised to look it up.
Webster's New World College Dictionary defines the term "insurgent" as "rising up against established authority."
Even Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who stood beside Rumsfeld at the news conference, found it impossible to describe the fighting in Iraq without twice using the term `insurgent.'
After the word slipped out the first time, Pace looked sheepishly at Rumsfeld and quipped apologetically, "I have to use the word `insurgent' because I can't think of a better word right now."
Without missing a beat, Rumsfeld replied with a wide grin: "Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government. How's that?"
Enemies of
Voters and
Iraqi
Lawmakers
How about murderous scumbag camel-humping low-life criminal raghead rapist muslim terrorist nutbag?
It was AP and their ilk that started legitimizing them by calling them insurgents in the first place. Rummy had a good term for many of them in the beginning -- dead enders.
Sorry, Savage didn't coin that term either. Not to say Rummy doesn't enjoy listening to him. I certainly do.
Savage has been against the use of the word "Insurgents" from day 1. That is what I was referring to.
They are the Enemy. That is the word Savage uses, among Islamofacists and occasionally Terrorists. But, he points out, we cannot have a War on Terror. It must be a War on Islamofacism. Once we get the terms right, we can identify the Enemy.
Small, but important points in psychological warfare.
And, let us not forget, the MSM went to school on Goebbels!
OOOORRAAAAAAA
Don't the troops call them AIF's? Anti-Iraqi-Forces? I guess that term got voted off the island.
Most truthful would anti-Shiite whatever. Insurgents would be OK if it was "Anti-Shiite Insurgents" or "Pro-Baathist Insurgents". To just say "insurgents" is a loaded word that implies broad public support and no sectarian loyalties.
Okay, then why are we negotiating with them?
"Illegal enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government" sounds better to me.
I think "terrorist" is a better word still...
I was once OK with "War on Islamofascism" but now I see why the President chose to be more general in the naming. Baathists are more like hard-core leftists than Islamists. Bush has centered the war on terror, wisely, on the Godless socialist Baathists...leaving a "way out" for the Islamists to "save face". The way the western left has come to support the socialist Baathist terrorists is so shocking that many Islamists must be shaking their heads and wondering if they, the Islamists, really want a world in which they are allied with such nutcases plus the Godless Baathists. We can defeat the socialists and the Islamists can pretend to thank us for it...thus surrendering to us by making it look like they wanted the Baathists gone all the time. Our naming the WOT would be quite important.
Similarly, it is good that the President didn't call this WW3. That would have invited the enemy to make this more of a world war than it has been. WOT is a good name that gives everyone a chance to end hostilities at any time conditions are right and terror is renounced.
How about EVILDOERS...PIGS...SCUM OF THE EARTH...LOWLIFE DIRTBAGS....
Maybe we should call them "undocumented political activists"?
Good thoughts...
So there are several enemies. Islamofacists, Baathists, Terrorists, Arabs and Turks....and vile Imans...
Someone who gets it!!!
Jihadists is the correct label. That label will always refer to the psychopathic religion they murder others in the name of, very important. This needs to be promoted.
"War on Terrorism" is such a misnomer, after all, terrorism is, as Robert Spencer said, a tactic, not an opponent, we fight opponents, we use various tactics in doing so. Time to get smart, use words correctly and clearly define our enemy, which "Jihadists" does. It puts the correct focus on our efforts, less confusion.
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